


reminder to yourself: be brave enough to try

by mermistia



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, anyway, bro im straight up not having a good time rn, dadvid, how to deal w/ my feelings 101, impulse wrote all of this in the past half hour so dadvid rights ig, i’m going through some shit so u know how it be! gotta project onto max, max w/ my coping mechanisms babeyyy, or at least one of them lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 06:44:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21114434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermistia/pseuds/mermistia
Summary: The family you were born with doesn’t have to be the one you stay with.





	reminder to yourself: be brave enough to try

**Author's Note:**

> anyway my life sucks ass so here’s max feeling my pain

He doesn’t like remembering. 

He’s _over_ it, he’s over everything that’s happened to him, he doesn’t care about his parents anymore. He really doesn’t. But still, sometimes remembering hurts. Even if he’s accepted everything, even if he’s made his peace with everything, he finds himself yearning for the childhood he could have had, the childhood that he wanted to have, _the childhood that he should have had, the childhood that was ripped from his hands and stolen from him by the people that gave it to him in the first place._

He hasn’t even hit 18 yet, he’s not even an adult, he’s a _child,_ and yet there’s already so much weighing him down. 

There’s so much pressure, and Max can feel himself slipping away little by little, clinging onto anything he can reach as the ground seems to slip out from under him, sending him closer and closer to an endless darkness that he knows would swallow him whole without a second thought. 

He wants to be okay, more than anything. And he is, in a way. He’s okay with his parents being who they are, the way that they are. They won’t change. They’ve broken a part of him. He knows that. He’s used to it. He hasn’t forgiven them, he never will, but he’s accepted who they are. He’s accepted everything they’ve done. But there’s still that part of him, something somewhere deep within him that twists with a painful sickness each time he thinks of his home, his parents, his family, himself. 

He has to let that anger out. 

He has to, or it’ll burn him from the inside out, eating up inside him and destroying him and turning him into a perfect replica of his parents, swear words and anger and broken furniture alike. He _really_ doesn’t want to be like his parents. He doesn’t think he could handle it, becoming the exact thing that ruined him. Becoming something that would ruin everything around him. 

_Don’t become your parents._

_Don’t become your parents._

_Don’t become your parents._

Nikki. 

Neil. 

Gwen. 

David. 

They don’t deserve that, they don’t deserve to have to deal with that. He couldn’t do that to them, he couldn’t become that monster.

He loves them too much to make them endure it.

Max knows he should be carrying on for himself, living for himself. But he’s not, really. It’s for them, it’s _always_ for them, for their soft touches and small smiles and the tears that he doesn’t want to be the cause of. He can’t hurt them. Not like that. He can’t fill their lives with cold, staring eyes, with pained screams, with blood and pain and anger and everything that is wrong, so wrong, so fucking wrong with him.

His hand is starting to ache, gripping his pen so tightly that the plastic is staring to crack under his touch, but he doesn’t let up. He needs to write, to get it all down, to scream on paper and scribble down the words that he wishes he could throw out loud. It’s an outlet that worries him sometimes, worry that someone will find the journal and read it and destroy him (God knows there’s enough people at Lake Lilac who’d be happy to), but he finds it hard to care in the moment, filling the pages in front of him with scrawls of thick biro, covering every inch of paper. 

He can hear everyone, walking across the field, calling him with voices that he doesn’t want to listen to. 

“Max?”

“Max, where are you?”

“_Max?_”

He _really_ can’t be bothered to answer. Everyone is so concerned, and yet they’re not, not really. They don’t want to listen. They want him to be happy. Immediately. They want smiles and sunshine and perfection, and for him to sit quiet and obedient and _do what you’re told, Max. Stop acting out. Stop talking back. Stop stop stop._

He hates it. He writes that down, underlining the word hate with a scribble that almost tears through the page, and throws the notebook down onto the grass beside him with a huff. It doesn’t always work. It doesn’t always calm him down, no matter how much he wants it to, he can’t always express his feelings. He hates that too, the terrifying inability to say how he feels, the way he stumbles over his words until he spits out the lie of _I’m fine,_ the way he’s so scared to say anything ever, too scared of being a burden, a nuisance, a mistake that no one wants anything to do with anymore. 

People don’t consider him a mistake. 

He knows that, deep down, but it’s still hard to believe sometimes. 

Half the time, he considers himself a mistake. 

He doesn’t realise that he’s crying until he feels his eyes burning, his breath catching in his throat so suddenly that he feels like he could choke on it, and he wipes his eyes hastily, leaving dark marks on the blue fabric that covers his arm. 

A bird is singing somewhere above him, and he shoots it his best glare through teary, blurred eyes. It sings anyway, with a noise that makes his head spin and his stomach turn. It’s too high pitched, too continuous, too _wrong,_ and Max takes in fast shallow breaths as he realises that he can’t block it out, he can’t make it stop, he can’t make anything stop, he has to be perfect perfect perfect, his life is falling falling falling apart and he can’t stop it he can’t stop it everything is wrong wrong wrong he can’t stop it but someone please make it _stop,_ make the noise _stop-_ make everything stop before it kills him- 

It stops. 

Not his life. That continues, no matter how much he wishes he could press pause on it. 

But the bird song stops, replaced by dead silence.

Silence broken only by a quiet _”Hey,”_ from above him, and Max looks up so fast that it makes his head spin.

David. 

Because who else would it be?

“Go away,” he sniffs, and he groans at himself when he realises that it was so quiet, so almost silent that David probably didn’t hear it. Somehow, he finds that he doesn’t mind. 

David sits down next to him. Not touching him, far away enough that not even their knees brush together, but he sits himself down in the grass and looks across at Max, over the lake, up at the sky. 

Max finds he doesn’t mind that either. 

“What’s that?” David says. His voice is soft, just a little, but there’s no hint of it being patronising, and Max breathes a sigh of relief at that. 

“Journal,” he says, coughing a little when his voice croaks. 

“For feelings?” David asks, and Max snorts. _Feelings_ sounds so trivial, but he supposes that’s what it is really, so he gives a short nod and stares resolutely across the lake, sparing David only short glances out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m glad you have a way to get your anger out of you,” David says, and he reaches a hand out. Not too close, not too far away, just holding a hand perfectly in-between himself and Max. An offering, a show of care, a show of love. 

Max takes it, and laces his fingers through David’s without a word. 

“Can you tell me what it was about?” David says, and Max sniffs again, leaning into his side. 

“Parents. Family. Home.”

“Ah.” David hesitates, biting his lip, playing over his words carefully. “You don’t like your home?”

“Understatement of the year, David.”

Another pause, until David breaks it, squeezing Max’s hand a little tighter. “It doesn’t have to be your home.”

Seven words. 

Only seven words, but David said them with such sureness that Max has to sit up a little to stare at him, repeating the words in his head. 

“What?”

“This can be your home.” David gestures to the lake, the camp, to himself, pointing straight at his heart. “You can make a new family. You just have to be brave enough to talk to them.”

“I’m not brave,” Max says, and it brings tears to his eyes. 

David smiles. Like he cares. He smiles like he knows everything, like he can see everything, like he believes in Max so much, so truly, so fully. “Trust me, Max. Please, trust me.”

“Trust you about _what?_” Max spits the words more violently than he means to, and an apology is on the tip of his tongue almost immediately. “I’m sorry- I’m _sorry,_ David, I just- what if I don’t _get_ a second chance? I don’t know how to talk to people. I can’t do it. I’m not _brave._”

David smiles again, and Max leans further into him, clutching him like he’s the only thing left in the world. 

“Trust me, Max. You will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> max sweetheart im so sorry i want to hug u
> 
> (also im @mermistia on tumblr so like. follow me for updates on when i next plan to hurt max ig)


End file.
